Highly tunable hybrid metamaterials employing split-ring resonators strongly coupled to graphene surface plasmons

TL;DR

This paper presents a highly tunable hybrid metamaterial combining graphene plasmonic resonators with split-ring resonators, achieving strong coupling and enabling high-speed THz modulation with potential for advanced optical applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hybrid structure that strongly couples graphene plasmonics with split-ring resonators, demonstrating tunability and high-speed modulation capabilities.

Findings

Achieved over 60% transmission modulation in THz range

Demonstrated operation speed exceeding 40 MHz

Established platform for enhanced light-matter interactions

Abstract

Metamaterials and plasmonics are powerful tools for unconventional manipulation and harnessing of light. Metamaterials can be engineered to possess intriguing properties lacking in natural materials, such as negative refractive index. Plasmonics offers capabilities to confine light in subwavelength dimensions and to enhance light-matter interactions. Recently,graphene-based plasmonics has revealed emerging technological potential as it features large tunability, higher field-confinement and lower loss compared to metal-based plasmonics. Here,we introduce hybrid structures comprising graphene plasmonic resonators efficiently coupled to conventional split-ring resonators, thus demonstrating a type of highly tunable metamaterial, where the interaction between the two resonances reaches the strong-coupling regime. Such hybrid metamaterials are employed as high-speed THz modulators, exhibiting over 60% transmission modulation and operating speed in excess of 40 MHz. This device concept also provides a platform for exploring cavity-enhanced light-matter interactions and optical processes in graphene plasmonic structures for applications including sensing, photo-detection and nonlinear frequency generation.